Fertile Ground [Mass Market Paperback]

Ben Mezrich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 2001

At his research clinic in Boston, renowned specialist Jake Foster uncovers the terrifying secret behind the city's rapidly rising infertility rate. Meanwhile in a nearby ER, his wife, Dr. Brett Foster, unsuccessfully tries to save a young man with no visible injuries from bleeding to death -- the fifth such fatality in a week. Working together to find answers, Jake and Brett discover that the two epidemics stem from the same diabolical source. And now they will risk everything to expose a sinister plot that could claim thousands of lives ... starting with their own.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

There's a whopping coincidence at the center of Mezrich's fourth novel, a medical thriller in which two simultaneous, distinct epidemics are making their way through the greater Boston area. Fertility doctor Jake Foster discovers a new syndrome causing male sterility, including his own, while his wife, Brett, a second-year ER attending at Boston Central, has seen several healthy young men die from mysterious, massive internal and external hemorrhaging. Soon the husband and wife discover that both outbreaks have the same cause, the mysterious Compound G developed by a company called Alaxon. The head of this company, Simon Scole, expects his virtually undetectable and top-secret chemical (deliberately not identified, its potential use is not revealed to the reader until late in the story) to make a fortune and dominate the financial and political arenas. His son Malthus, the company's enforcer, is charged with the removal of any impediments to that planAand the Fosters, with their knowledge linking the chemical to both medical crises, constitutes a serious danger to Alaxon's success. Good, innocent doctors get offed by inhuman killing machine Malthus, and the Fosters uncover the sinister conspiracy while continuing their thwarted attempts to conceive a baby, learning sexy lessons along the way. As the dead bodies pile up, the plot races toward a frantic, convoluted, but ultimately predictable resolution. In fact, the 27 chapters read more like 27 tidy, accessible movie scenes: the hero copes with a familiar, personal shortcoming (Jake's clinical approach to getting his wife pregnant is ruining his marriage), with clever bad-guy dialogue (Malthus Scole spouts clich?d business maxims as he kills his victims) and the requisite "unexpected" betrayal. The plot has just enough science to make it plausible, and readers may tolerate the unlikely dovetailing of events, but this thriller is essentially ephemeral, enjoyable entertainment. While the characters won't imprint themselves on readers' minds, Mezrich competently weaves the hot topic of male infertility throughout his tumultuous tale. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Mezrich, who spooked us with his first work, Reaper?soon to be a TV movie?returns with a scary new medical thriller. While Dr. Jake Lancet is shocked by evidence of escalating male infertility, his doctor wife, Brett, finds herself mopping up after a fearsome Ebola-like disease. Soon they realize that the two diseases are linked.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Avon (October 2, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061097985
• ISBN-13: 978-0061097980
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #633,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I'm the author of nine books, at the moment, including Bringing Down The House, The True Story of Six MIT kids Who Took Vegas- which sort of made me a vegas expert. I live in Boston with my fiance and pug, Bugsy.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Boston Again Attacked in Medical Thriller, January 7, 2000

By 

Gerald S. Rosen (Pompton Lakes, N.J.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fertile Ground (Hardcover)

Ben Mezrich joins Robin Cook in unleashing medical disaster on the poor unsuspecting inhabitants on Boston. Once again big business looks to maximize profits at the expense of the consumer. Although the premise of this novel is still a bit far fetched at the dawn of the 21st Century, who knows what the future may hold. This is a well written story with interesting and very believable characters. At 283 pages it is a overnight can't put down book. Look for an interesting and quite novel use of melons.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars FERTILE FUN, September 6, 2001

By 

Michael Butts (Berkeley Springs, WV USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fertile Ground (Hardcover)

I do pity readers who can't read a book without looking for errors or "unrealities" that they seem to know in their vast wealth of useless knowledge. I found this book highly entertaining as a medical "what if" thriller. Not a treatise on anything. Just a fun read, people with interesting heroes and villains.
The story centers on a mysterious compound that not only causes healthy young men to bleed to death, but also causes infertility in males.
The hero, Jake Foster and his wife, Brett, start out the story by trying to have sex in order to procreate a child. Their lovemaking is clinical, measured and not highly enjoyable. But once the mysterious compound kicks in, Brett and Jake discover that there are more important things to worry about right now.
The action is cinematic, cartoonish, and tremendously involving. I find this to be Mezrich's most entertaining novel, and the scene in the grocery store with the melons is outstanding! If Ben can keep his humor about him, and whisk away to these faroff lands, he will probably enjoy more commercial success.

11 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Michael Crichton and Robin Cook need not worry, yet., June 26, 2000

By 

Jim Wilson (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fertile Ground (Hardcover)

Young Mr. Mezrich is obviously able to craft a decent thriller plot. However, his characterizations frequently veer into cartoon territory, especially his current crop of villains. Unfortunately he forgets, or is clueless from the get-go, that the key to getting away with this sort of thing is to keep everything else as realistic as possible. Early on, the reader of this novel runs into extremely silly inaccuracies which continue all the way to the(extremely predictable)conclusion. When a novel starts out with this sloppy approach to detailing, the reader tends to start anticipating other examples, to the detriment of involvement with the plot. Mr. Mezrich delivers lots of them, unfortunately.

For his, and his editor's, edification, here are some of those examples:

Much is made of the Principal Nasty, Malthus(puhleeze!)Scoles being a cashiered veteran of the "Airborne Rangers", to the extent that he has "Property of the US Air Force" tattooed on his arm. Unfortunately for his credibility, Airborne troops have nothing to do with the Air Force, but are part of the US Army. At this point, I should mention that I have never been a member of either the US Army, Air Force, or the "Airborne Rangers", however I've read enough competently-written thrillers to know the score. On this note, I feel compelled to point out that Rangers are Special Forces troops who are delivered to their job sites by whatever means necessary. "Airborne" means by parachute from an(Army) aircraft. Every time Mr. Mezrich drags this military thing into his exposition (often), it gets sillier. "Airborne Boot Camp", for example, is brought up later. New recruits go to "Boot Camp" to be turned into soldiers. Those who show aptitude or inclination go on to "Jump School". After that, they may go on to "Special Forces Training". After which, they are called "Rangers", or whatever.

If this were the only area in which the author demonstrated his unconcerned ignorance for basic credibility, it would possibly be ignorable. However, Mezrich goes on to show that he (and his editor)are equally clueless about, and unconcerned with many areas of reality. Yet another example: one of the protagonists, Jake Foster M.D., throws a paperweight into the screen of a really big TV monitor, resulting in a blast of fire and flying glass fragments. Those vast hordes of us who are aware that picture tubes are usually (un)filled with vacuum, and would implode (collapse inward)if punctured, might be able to make a stretch and envision that it could be possible to have some sort of picture tube pressurized with some kind of exotic gas, are quickly deprived of this lifeline to believability by the statement that the tube is pressurized to "14 pounds to the square inch!" Oooh! Of course, those of us who had science in grade school might remember that normal atmospheric pressure is 15 pounds per square inch.The resulting implosion would be even gentler than with vacuum inside the thing. After this, the author goes ahead and calls it a vacuum tube anyway.

Closer to the finale, we discover that Jake the M.D. minored in "Electronic Engineering!", which enables him to tear into an audio-video console, pull out a couple of bare wires, and attach them to a sophisticated miniature camera/sound recorder through handy screw-terminals on its side. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a sophisticated electronic device made with screw-terminal interface since 1945. Then, poor, glass-shredded, ant-bitten, screwdriver-stabbed "Airborne Ranger" Malthus falls on the exposed wiring of the same A/V console wearing his soaking-wet suit and is spectacularly fried by electricity. (Audio and Video signal levels are about 1 Volt, by the way, but why quibble at this point?).

As long as I'm kicking the pup, I might as well point out that the part of a handgun one holds it by is commonly called the "grip". Elderly lady authors who write "Cozy Mysteries" usually call it the "handle", as does Mr. Mezrich.

As a thriller, I give Fertile Ground two stars. As a comedy it deserves five or six, maybe seven.

PS: Ants don't have stingers in their tails, even Korean ones; they exude formic acid from their mandibles (jaws). I wonder which grade-school this guy attended?